In a Year of Politicians and Bad News, Surprising Stories of Resistance

The giddy heights of 2011—the Wisconsin uprising and Occupy Wall Street—yielded this year to a slog of an election season where many crucial questions were not even up for debate, from labor law reform to the minimum wage to climate change.

Unions once again dropped a lot of cash and burned a lot of shoe leather defending against the greater evils of a Romney administration and a Republican Senate. But winning meant holding the line, at best, and a hard pivot after Election Day to defend what too many Democrats won’t: Social Security and Medicare.